Does Anyone Really Want Nancy Pelosi Back As Speaker?

Rep. Steve Israel, the Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, may have the toughest job in Washington right now – selling the idea that Democrats should be returned to the House majority so that the Speaker’s gavel can be returned to Nancy Pelosi.

This would be the same Nancy Pelosi who, the Washington Free Beacon noted recently, “steered more than a billion dollars in subsidies to a light rail project that benefitted a company run by a high-dollar Democratic donor and in which her husband is a major investor.”

This would also be the same Nancy Pelosi who sat on disclosing the fact that her husband made millions from a land deal with Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, a California bazillionaire whom Rep. Pelosi later helped to become Ambassador to Hungary.

And that is the same Nancy Pelosi who bought stock in initial public offerings (IPOs) that earned hefty returns while she had access to insider information that would have been illegal for an average citizen to trade with. As"60 Minutes" reported, Pelosi and her husband participated in at least eight IPOs while having access to information directly relating to the companies involved. One of those came in 2008 (while she was Speaker) from Visa, just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies, began making its way through the House.

“Undisturbed by a potential conflict of interest the Pelosis purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of $44 dollars. Two days later it was trading at $64. The credit card legislation never made it to the floor of the House,” Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" reported.

And this would also be the same Nancy Pelosi who chased Rep. Tom Marino across the House floor, taking offense at comments by the Pennsylvania Republican during debate on the border funding bill, calling him “insignificant” among other things.

Marino, in debate on the border bill said, according to ABC News, “You know something that I find quite interesting about the other side? Under the leadership of the former Speaker [Pelosi], and under the leadership of their former leader [Rep. Steny Hoyer], when in 2009 and 2010, they had the House, the Senate and the White House, and they knew this problem existed,” he continued. “They didn’t have the strength to go after it back then. But now are trying to make a political issue out of it now.”

Off-mic, Pelosi then approached Marino, crossing the aisle in view of cameras, and apparently challenged Marino’s assertion that Democrats did not do anything about the issue when they had majority control.

“Yes it is true,” Marino replied directly to Pelosi, who was House Speaker in those years. “I did the research on it. You might want to try it. You might want to try it, Madam Leader. Do the research on it. Do the research. I did it. That’s one thing that you don’t do.”

Marino then urged lawmakers to support the border supplemental “because apparently I hit the right nerve.”

After Marino concluded his remarks and as many Republicans applauded their colleague, Pelosi crossed the chamber again in view of cameras, enraged, pointing and sticking her finger at Marino.

“Somebody said, ‘look out behind you!’ She came up to me and said ‘you are inconsequential,’ and ‘you are just insignificant’—twice she said I was ‘insignificant.’ I let it go, but she said it again and I said ‘you are acting arrogant.’"

"She kept waving her finger and getting all kinds of spastic,” recounted Marino. “I was perfectly calm and I think that’s also what unhinged her, because she thought she could get me upset or thought I was going to be afraid of her.”

“Then the Sergeant-at-Arms, security, and someone from her side then took her off the floor,” Marino said. “I saw them walk up, one of the guys, and then someone told me later they took her off the floor."

"She was just real out of control and I wasn’t going to take it," Marino explained. "People have been there for 30 years and they’ve said they’ve never seen an exhibition like that—it was a tremendous breach of protocol to cross the well and to do that. She thinks she’s royalty and I’m not going to put up with that…”

The DCCC and its chairman Rep. Steve Israel claim summer momentum heading into the 2014 mid-term elections is on their side, but the evidence from a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll suggests that a plurality of Americans want the Speaker’s gavel to be kept well away from Nancy Pelosi: When asked if they would like to see the majority in the House stay Republican, or become Democrat. 43 percent of registered voters wanted Republicans in the majority and 41 percent wanted Democrats in the majority, with 16 percent unsure.